David M. Berry: The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age (2011)

The Philosophy of Software is a critical introduction to the subject of code and software, and develops an understanding of its social and philosophical implications in the digital age. The book has been written specifically for people interested in the subject from a non-technical background and provides a lively and interesting analysis of these new media forms. Software is a tangle, a knot, which ties together the physical and the ephemeral, the material and the ethereal, into a complete system that can be controlled and directed. However, software exceeds our ability to place limits on its entanglement, for it has in the past decade entered the everyday home through electronic augmentation that has replaced the mechanical world of the twentieth century. From washing machines to central heating systems, children’s toys to television and video; the old electro-magnetic and servo-mechanical world is being revolutionised by the silent logic of virtual devices. It is time, therefore, to examine our virtual situation.

Publisher Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 2011
ISBN 0230244181, 9780230244184
200 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)

The Psychogeophysics Handbook (2010, draft)

With psychogeography easily dened as a playful examination of the total effects of geography and place on the individual, [“the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” Guy Debord. Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, 1955]. Psychogeophysics extends such research to embrace geophysics, defined as the quantitative observation of the earth’s physical properties, and its interaction with local spectral ecologies. Geophysics equally encompasses archaeological geophysics, with measurement of such properties allowing for the mapping of previous traces through techniques of particle/wave detection and data forensics.

This extension of psychogeography into geophysics implies a collision between interpretation (fiction) and measurement, with Psychogeophysics proposed as a novel discipline that bridges any such distinction through the medium of code, and offers a speculative take on the future of code as an uncovering of its locative (diagnostic) potentials leading to a new phase of software studies.

By anonymous
20 July 2010

authors
article about psychogeophysics (Anthony Iles, Mute)

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Matthew Fuller: Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software (2003)

A far-reaching and strikingly original collection of essays on the “culture of software” by new-media critic Matthew Fuller. Behind the Blip looks at the many ways in which the ostensibly neutral userinterfaces, search engines, “intelligent agents,” and word processorsthat are now part of our everyday life are actively reshaping the waywe look at and interact with the world.

Publisher Autonomedia, 2003
Anti-copyright for non-commercial publication
ISBN 1570271399, 9781570271397
165 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2017-3-14)